I'm usually quiet about these things...until it affects my family.

Our state's budget is mired in a five billion dollar deficit, thousands of Minnesotans who want work cannot find jobs and families across the state struggle to make ends meet in this economy, so what are some Republican legislators going to do about it? Amend the constitution to ban marriage for same-sex couples!   


Please contact your legistlator and encourage them to defeat this.  If you don't live in Minnesota, consider sending an email to the entire House Committee.  Their email addresses can be found here. 


I wanted to share letters that friends and family have shared with me as they have sent it to their senators. Let's defeat this. For Jude and all the other LGBT families in Minnesota.

Letter from my mom:




My husband and I are not residents of Minnesota, but we have three very good reasons why we are urging you to vote no on your state's proposed marriage amendment: my daughter, her partner, and their 14 month-old son. As you know, we are fighting this same battle here in California and we are hoping fervently that Prop 8 will be overturned.


When we learned that our daughter is gay when she was 17, we were shocked, sad, and most of all scared - scared that she would be discriminated against. Fourteen years later, after a great deal of learning and emotional adjustment, we see our daughter's family just as we will see our son's family should he have one some day. I dare any of you to spend a day with them and then say they don't have the same right to legalize their relationship that your heterosexual children have. They are both college graduates, have good jobs, own their own home, and are doing a fantastic job of raising their son. If only all children had the benefit of being raised in such a loving family, the world would be a much better place.


Please, take some time to learn about this issue rather than voting blindly along political lines. Don't prohibit my daughter from having the same civil right as yours.


 
Letter from Dean:


This situation is so frustrating I can barely tolerate it. You can rest assured that I will be taking this case directly to the voters. It's only a gut feeling, but it's a strong one: I think this ballot initiative will lose. I see my family in Two Harbors, many of them conservative, all of them typical small town Minnesotans, yet every single one of them, including my 74 year old aunt, fully support marriage equality. In fact, my aunt is the most outspoken one about it. I see Republicans and 99% of the solid conservatives in my law school class, and they all think this is a ridiculous amendment - purely a bad and despicable idea.


What we need to overcome is ignorance, more than anything else. At the end of the day, it's bigots influencing the votes of uninformed people that is the threat. I believe that sharing your story, and the story of the tens thousands of people like you, Liz, and Jude, is the right approach and the winning approach. Once people who don't know you are no different than they are, and you're not, they won't vote against you. Massive voter education and turnout will be the keys, and it's where I'll focus my efforts to help this backfire in ways that the bigots behind it could have never imagined.


I'm sorry we have to do this. I can't think of someone I'd rather fight for than you and yours, however.


Letter from Katie, ECFE Friend:

Legislator, I urge you to reject putting the rights of LGBT Minnesotans on the ballot in 2012. It is wrong to do this. It takes our state in a direction we should not be going. Minnesota's strong

reputation as a welcoming place for all people is dishonored by idea that we would consider permanently denying a minority group equal protection of the law in our state's founding document. Advancing an amendment banning marriage for same-sex couples — which will benefit no Minnesotan, but will hurt the families of thousands of LGBT couples — is going to create a multi-million dollar political battle in our state that will divide our communities and sideline the real issues that deeply affect all Minnesotans like the budget, education, jobs

and the economy, transportation, and our quality of life. Please do not do this to Minnesota.

Regardless of your personal stance on gay marriage, the fact remains that gay couples and, more importantly, gay families already exist in the state of Minnesota.

I dread the thought of one day explaining to my 3-year old daughter, who is unbelievably loved, nurtured, and cared for on a daily basis, why the only family she has ever known is deemed

unworthy and second class in the eyes of Minnesota and our government officials. I urge you to think seriously what kind of message this sends to children of GLBT parents--and whether or not  you would want to convey a similar message to your own child. As you can see from the

attached photo, we really are a typical family that loves Lake Harriet, summers in Minnesota and--above all--our daughter.

Letter from Jerilyn, ECFE Friend:

I urge you to please think long and hard about putting the marriage amendment on the ballot.  If it goes forward, Minnesota is going to end up being a horrible battleground.  Those of us who are LGBT know how mean-spirited and cruel people can be - and this is going to amplify that meanness.  For those of us who are adult LGBT people, frankly, we're used to it.  It's going to be demoralizing and depressing for sure, but we can deal with it.  What I'm deeply concerned about are the children - the LGBT children and the children in LGBT families.   This public battle, with people saying hateful, spiteful things aloud on tv, on radio, in the newspapers, and online, is going to be crushing to these children.

On a personal level, my partner and I have 2 wonderful, happy kids.  My heart breaks at what they're going to have to deal with once this battle heats up.  It's going to be ugly and it will no doubt scar them and so many other children very deeply.  Must you do this to the children?   Please, if you're having trouble seeing past this amendment as a positive political opportunity for yourself, at least think of all those LGBT children out there and all those children of LGBT parents  and show some mercy.  Please. 

Letter from Sharon, ECFE Friend:


Dear Legislator:

I want what every parent wants: to protect and nurture my child.  I
nurture my son, Jonah by giving him two devoted parents in a
committed, loving relationship.  I protect him by choosing to live in
Minnesota where our family is free from overt discrimination. Knowing
that our family could become the focus of a political battle in our
state breaks my heart on his behalf.

My parents are conservative Christians with a traditional view of
marriage. Every week, we share a meal and enjoy each other's cooking
and company. It wasn’t always this way. But since the arrival of their
grandson, we have found a way to connect despite our divergent
political and religious views.  We focus on what we share: our love
for family and a desire to see my baby boy – regardless of his
parent’s relationship – flourish and thrive. This fragile peace will
be threatened if we are forced to take sides in a political battle.

I am one of thousands of LGBT Minnesotans. I am a graduate of the
University of Minnesota. My partner and I have been together for seven
years.  I am a Licensed Associate Marriage and Family Therapist.  She
is a Registered Nurse.  In our respective careers, we care for the
emotional and physical needs of our fellow Minnesotans.  How
demoralizing it will be to get up and go to work each day knowing our
colleagues and clients heard the latest uncharitable, repellent
description of families like ours in the evening news.

I beseech your help in continuing to keep Minnesota a place where
families and employees can co-exist and thrive despite their
differences. I urge you to please reconsider advancing an amendment
banning marriage for same-sex couples. It will divide families. It
will strain work relationships. It will tarnish Minnesota’s reputation
as a welcoming place. It will hurt kids – those kids sitting in the
backseat of cars hearing vitriol directed at their families, no matter
how quickly their parents move to turn the dial.

Letter from Me:

Dear Representative,

I'm contacting you today to urge you to defeat the recently introduced bill to amend our state constitution to permanently ban marriage equality for same-sex couples. There is not one family, anywhere in the state, that will benefit from passing this divisive amendment. This only discriminates against thousands of LGBT Minnesotans, denying them equal protection of the laws that make our families more stable and our society a better place for all of us to live.

I'd like to tell you my story so that you can hopefully see how the proposed amendment would hurt my family.

My partner, Liz, and I met on the first day of high school at Palos Verdes Peninsula High School in Rolling Hills, California. We were both in the same English class and though we’d attended different intermediate schools, we had a few mutual friends. We both sang alto in the school choir and it didn’t take long for us both to become part of a small circle of close friends. By senior year, we’d discovered how deeply we truly loved one another. We chose our separate ways for college, me in Indiana and Liz in northern California. Through those four years, however, we managed to maintain our relationship and moved in together in the Bay Area of California upon graduation in 2001. We loved building our relationship and lives as adults in the Bay Area, but we knew we wanted kids, a dog, a home to call our own, and we knew how difficult that would be to attain in California. After attending a wedding here in 2004, we decided that Minnesota was the place we’d like to build our lives.

We have now lived here for almost 6 years. Despite knowing just one couple when we arrived, we have made many wonderful friends and very much love our new state, cold weather, and all (don’t get us wrong… we still look forward to our annual winter trips back to California!). While we knew that we wouldn’t have the same Domestic Partnership rights we had in California, we were heartened to learn of the existence of Rainbow Families and that it is the largest organization for GLBT families in the country. Through Rainbow Families, we met an amazing nurse practitioner who helped us realize our dream of becoming parents.

Now that our son, Jude, has arrived, we are having a wonderful time getting to know him and settling into life as parents - much the same way all parents do. Though we don't have any family here in Minnesota, we are incredibly lucky to have a strong network of support. We get to see our family in California on a regular basis thanks to the wonders of air travel and Skype. By all measures, Liz, Jude, and I are incredibly lucky to have such overwhelming love and support as a family.

In addition to the support we have from friends, family, and our community, we work hard to support each other as partners and as parents. We both work full time - Liz works for a non-profit educational organization and I work for a Fortune 500 company in downtown Minneapolis. I recently completed my MBA at the Carlson School. While we're certianly far from perfect, we support each other financially and emotionally and I can't think of anyone I'd rather parent with.

Legally, however, there are serious restrictions. While Liz and I could travel to another state and legally marry, we’ve chosen not to do so, since it would not be recognized here in Minnesota. Since we have a child, however, for whom we have agreed to be mutually responsible, we have taken steps to make ourselves as much like a legal family as possible. We are registered as Domestic Partners in California. We have created estate plans, wills, powers of attorney, and health care directives. We changed our last names so that when Jude was born, we could all have the same name. We went through the second parent adoption process so that on paper, I am legally Jude's parent, too.

I hope that you will see that Liz, Jude, and I are members of the Minnesota community too, and we wish to be recognized as the loving, supportive and supported family that we are. The proposed amendment would make that dream difficult to achieve, indeed.

We have faith that we will one day be allowed to marry and that our marriage will be recognized throughout the country. We are willing to be patient and wait for that day and we hope that the proposed amendment does not push that dream further back. I wish that we did not have to go through the second parent adoption process and defend our love for each other and our child. I wish that Jude could have both of his mothers listed on his birth certificate right from the beginning. I wish that Jude was not a statistic… another child born to another single mother with another father who isn’t in the picture. I hope you can see that our family is so much more than that. I hope that, when given the opportunity, you will advocate for families like mine in Minnesota and oppose the proposed amendment.

Letter from Katy:

Compassion, understanding, commitment and fidelity – four essential qualities of a good life partner but also four essential qualities for a good lawmaker.

As I write to you, the events unfolding in Minnesota bring a chill to my heart. The state’s residents continue to fight through a time of economic uncertainty, job loss and difficulties and now it seems like one of the priorities of the legislature is to discuss and vote on a proposed constitutional amendment to ban marriage equality for same sex partners. Not only do I find the timing incredibly foolish, but to call the root of the issue foolish would be an understatement.

Here’s some background about myself. I’m in my early thirties and blissfully engaged to marry my partner of seven years in July. Through the process of planning a wedding, I have learned more than ever the importance of commitment, love and support and we’re only just beginning our lives together. Not only is there no reason whatsoever why ALL people should not be able to share love and lifetime commitment through marriage as I am about to do, but I find that attempting to legislate love impossible and insulting.

I’ve been blessed to have many friends who are in same sex relationships and I can tell you first-hand that there is no shortage of love, support and commitment in these relationships. Let me take as an example my dear friends Lindsay and Liz Heyer who are residents of Plymouth (and happen to LOVE Minnesota after living there for years!). Having met both Lindsay and Liz as a teenager in high school, we’ve been the closest of friends for nearly two decades. While I’ve known for years that their love and commitment one another is strong, the birth of their adorable son Jude last February has only gone on to further prove what amazing parents these women are and how much they have to offer the world. Not only is their son bright, gifted and happy, but he is lucky enough to have two loving parents who will support him and enrich him for the rest of his life. I look to them as role models for the type of parent that I hope to be someday soon.

In such a frantic and frankly frightening time, there is no reason whatsoever to marginalize loving and committed relationships between people – such relationships are the light that can bring hope back to desperate times. I cannot wait to have children of my own, hoping that they will grow and play with children like Jude who is lucky enough to have two mommies and knowing that I will teach my children the most important parts of what it means to be an American – that ALL people are equal.

Please find the compassion and understanding as well as your commitment and fidelity to ALL of your constituents and do everything within your power to defeat such a discriminatory amendment before it goes one step further. Please ensure that our children can grow up in a world without such prejudice!